


J6135T7 
1919 



THE TOWNSHIP LINE 



Albert Frederick Wilson 




Copyright N°_15/S. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE TOWNSHIP LINE *$ 



THE TOWNSHIP LINE 

New England Narratives 

By 
ALBERT FREDERICK WILSON 




Harper & Brothers Publishers 
New York and London 



• 






±6 ! ?:3 



The 'T6wnship Line 



Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published October, 1919 

1-T 



©CI.A529919 



To R. D. W. 



Men cannot sing my tunes 

Because, they say, 

I have no tunes to sing — 

Not if counting off 

The run of fives and eights 

Is any test. 

They do not know 

The kind of song 

I try to bring to you. 

Yet if they had 
My tuning-fork, 
And knew the trick — 
Just where to strike the tines- 
Just how to catch the key — 

They'd find my tune 
In every little portion 
Of this book. 



CONTENTS Tg 



PAGE 



BARN FIRE! 3 

THE BAPTIST CHURCH 10 

THE SOUTH PASTURE LOT .... 14 

THREE MEN SPEAK 18 

PLOWS 22 

STREET LAMPS 28 

SOWING THE WINTER RYE ... 35 

WORDS IN PREFACE 42 

SIGNS 47 

BOGWATER 53 

THE TABLE WITH THE BANDY LEGS . 58 

WAITING FOR THE REAL-ESTATE MAN . 63 

GRAVESTONES 71 

LILAC-TIME 73 

HAUNTED HOUSES 76 

DOOR-STEPS . . . . . . .77 

I AM A TINKER 78 

PEAS PORRIDGE HOT 82 

THE ELEVEN FORTY-FIVE IS LATE . . 84 



THE TOWNSHIP LINE 



BARN FIRE! 

Barns burn up on windy nights. 

Some one forgets the lantern 

In the stall, or the draught 

Catches the sparks from a pipe. 

We put our corncobs aside 

When we go to water — 

Just inside the door on 

The joisting — brush aside the 

Hay dust with our thumbs 

And keep that place for the pipe; 

But we stick it back 

Between our teeth before 

We slide the door again. 

We do not see the sparks that fly. 

We close the door and latch it tight — 

The fire has a good start. 

Then the warm glow 
On the sky-line; 
The drowsy farm lands stir, 
Sit bolt upright with 
The fire fear in their eyes. 
Roosters crow, tumbling from 
Their roosts to announce the false dawn. 
Then comes the sound of men's feet 
Hurrying down the country road; 
Lumbering, heavy-footed farm horses, 
With blankets roped about their backs 
[3] 



And the wind through their manes, 
Are silhouetted along the stone wall, 
Animated wooden hobby-horses. 

We run to the doors to sweep our eyes 

Around the circle to find 

The red-hot spot 

With the sparks shooting 

Into the night, 

And we say, 

"That must be Williams's house, 

Or Craig's barn, or the school-house, 

Or the wagon-shop — " 

But our guess of a mile 

Is always three. 

Up and down across the hills 

We guess as we go, 

A hay-barn by the way 

The sparks fly, 

And haying-time just over, 

x\nd hay selling for 

Thirty dollars a ton. 

It is strange how an old barn 
That no one pays any attention to 
For fifty years, except to patch 
The roof and stuff hay into it — 
A dead shell with a cow-stall or two, 
And a bed for the old horses — 
Can scorch itself into the night, 
[41 



So that every living thing 
Stirs and wakes and turns 
Its wide eyes. 

A flaming black hulk 
There on its little hill, 
With the red life through its roof 
And its doors and its windows: 
Crushing, expanding, tearing- 
Whirling the dead hulk into 
A chaos of energy; conscious 
Of its mighty moment — 
Radiant from a coal lit by 
The first torch. 

The little gray barn 
That nobody noticed 
Making men run 
And curse 
And pray 
And wonder 
About the hand 
Of the Lord God. 

"Who said His name?" 
Stammered a little bowlegged man 
In a white cotton shirt 
At my elbow. 
"There ain't any — 
There ain't any God," 

[5] 



He spat, his throat dry 

With the blasphemy. 

I knew him — 

Jared Turnbull. 

He owned the barn. 

He'd lost his wife from the typhoid 

In the well the year before, 

And now he stood there with 

The rest of us — looking on. 

When he had gone, 

Muttering the damned words 

Over and over to keep the taste 

Of something sweet from slipping 

From his tongue, the old woman 

In the horse-blanket leaned 

To my shoulder. 

"He's beside himself," 

She said. "It'll be more than 

A year before he understands." 

And then from her cupped hands: 

"Some folks say he won't never. 

Maybe he's committed the Unforgivable.' 1 

Relayed from the creaking well-chains 
Came the cry, "The well's gone dry." 

The white horse tied to the cherry-tree 
Neighed through an old throat — 

[6] 



Much too old, querulous, despondent 
Of men and things. 

Such voices ought to be silenced — 
They commit a mischief. 

Then the roof fell in. 
The unseen hand of gravity- 
Reached up, releasing what was left 
Of the red flame in the rotten timbers. 
And at that last power men stood dumb 
With the old futile awe upon their faces. 

So the consuming flame 
Brought out those country faces, 
Set them like a magic-lantern show 
Against the black curtain of the night — 
Man and woman of New England. 

The hollow cheeks — 

Toothless or with projecting rims 

Of cheap dental parlors — 

Eyes blanked by the township line — 

Shoulders pulled by a one-horse plow. 

The tag end of the tag end 
Of the strong that went 
East and west when the patient, 
Long-suffering New England hills 
Began to spume poverty. 
[7] 



And I thought of my old portraits 
Of Connecticut *men and women, 
Those who first fenced these meadows 
And reared the timbers of that barn 
And built the Baptist church. . . . 

On the way home 

The county attorney 

Asked for a lift. 

"Not a cent of insurance — 

A shiftless lot"; 

He condemned with the 

Straight arrow of Youth. 

"They work so hard," I said. 
"Night and morning they are at it. 
Faithful to the last strength." 

He said, "Their fields are old women. 
No man can breed with them." 

I said, "We are no better, 

We do not speak out — 

We do not tell the truth 

About New England; 

We love it beyond stark eyes." 

But he went back to the circle: 

" A shiftless lot — 

But I like them for jurymen — 

[8] 



Always choose them when 
The case is one of j-u-s-t-i-c-e! 
They'll give a man his due — 
Lean over backwards to do it — 
They can get their teeth 
Into a man's rights. 

"Just a plain statement of the facts 
No oratory of New York lawyers 
Can fool them when somebody 
Is trying to take something 
Away from somebody that 
He ought not to have." 

I'm glad that I picked up 
The attorney on the way home 
From Turnbull's fire. 
2 



THE BAPTIST CHURCH 

They are making the old Baptist church 

Into a moving-picture show. 

A man by the name of Levy bought it. 

It wasn't much of a church 

With its low-ceiling room 

And its tiny white steeple 

Sticking up from a little green hill. 

Connecticut is full of them 
Or used to be, when the 
Crossroads stopped men's footsteps 
Before the sign-posts pointed 
To ten thousand miles. 

My great-grandfather helped 

To build that church. 

It has stood by the country road 

A hundred years or more. 

He climbed the steeple box 

When it was done 

And stood there on his head. 

Every neighbor did his part 

With the tools at his hands: 

Oak timber from Peck's wood; 

Nathan Post with his three sons — 

Boss carpenters every one; 

Noah Hepburn, teacher and surveyor; 

[10] 



Noag Reynolds, stone-mason; 
Philip Winslow, with the best 
Four-horse team in town. 

And the women made the rag-carpet 
Down the aisle; and the linen cloth 
For the communion service; 
And they swept on Fridays- 
Washed the windows of God's house- 
Kept them clean, women's hands- 
Eager to the Lord God 
From the churn and the brick oven 
And the constant doing of things 
For little children. 

The little old Baptist church: 
They are making it over 
Into a moving-picture show. 
The little old worn-out room 
With its straight-back pews: 
From the days when men leaned 
Forward to the voice of God. 

Those men — 
And their sons? 
They are everywhere to-day, 
Even here, in Connecticut. 
They have come back 
To the old places; some of them 
111] 



Bought up the barren meadows 
And the pasture lands; 
Some have Italian Gardens 
In New England. 

And one man brings the robe, 
And one man runs the bath, 
And one man lays the clothes, 
And one man brings the mail, 
In New England. 

"Drive only the roads 
That are smooth and even; 
There are extra cylinders 
For extra hills" — 
Oh, the lungs of iron 
And the hearts of steel 
In New England. 

And the little old Baptist church — 
All day long I have been watching 
The old negro — splitting up 
The pulpit into kindling wood — 

And I think 
Of the growing lands 
Keeping men to growing things; 
Clod, rock and manure 
[12] 



Broken by men's hands 
Into New England. 

Oh, I don't so much blame Levy. 
He goes to his own church 
Every Saturday morning. 



THE SOUTH PASTURE LOT 

John Todd has sold 

The old South Pasture Lot. 

The worn-out apple-trees 

Go with it, and the raspberry-patch. 

John held on to it 

As long as he could — 

Kept making excuses to save it. 

But it wasn't worth anything — 

No more than he was. 

But it was all he had — 

All there was left 

Of the Todd grant 

Running back five miles 

From Long Island Sound — 

All except the house and dooryard. 

He came over to sit on my door-step: 

What would I do? 

"A man couldn't live 

With just a dooryard — 

But then the pasture lot 

Didn't make a farm. 

And the money would patch 

Up the house and keep those 

Mortgage-lenders about their business." 

It wasn't as though he 
Could grow anything on the lot. 
U4] 



"It won't have to work any more — 
That's one thing; Brewster '11 let 
It guzzle in rich manure — 
Stuff it up like a fat goose — 
Better off than me in that respect. 

"But then that's just 

What I object to — 

Treating his pastures like himself. 

You know what he's up to — 

Bound to have five hundred acres — 

And everything he touches 

Stops working. 

"You take that stone wall. 

My grandfather built it 

With his own hands — 

Picked the stone from the field 

Thirty days to the acre — 

And carted them there. 

He made the wall 

And the wall made — 

Well, one of his sons 

Was a college professor. 

"That old wall's got the makings 

Of a lot more good men 

If they'd only leave it alone. 

It '11 make these I-talians, maybe — 

I know what you're thinking — 

[15] 



'Didn't make me,' you're saying — 
I can tell by the way your lips move. 
But what kind of an argument is that? 

"My grandfather wouldn't like 
To see it go to a man like Brewster. 
He didn't get along none too well 
With Brewster's old man when he 
Was as poor as Job's turkey 
And carrying swill for us. 

"That's the trouble with Brewster. 
He won't let the wall stay natural 
Like a man's beard, with the gravy 
And the tobacco falling — just so — 
He'll have a stone-mason over here 
Within the week — you know that. 
Stone walls ain't the same when 
You trim them up and plaster them. 
The Lord knocks down walls 
For you and me to pick up again. 
There ain't a wall between here 
And Berswick you can work on. 

"These city New-Englanders 

With their ancestor worship — 

Plain idolatry, I call it — 

Come back and buy up my pasture lot 

And yours; strip off their overalls 

And dress them up for Sunday-school 

[16] 



With perfumery on their handkerchief*, 
What I want to know is 
How about my ancestors? 

"It '11 grow to look like him 
Instead of me — you know that. 
Fields have a way of doing that. 
And it's what I can't stand — 
Having it right there 
Next to my windows — 
When things stop working 
They don't look like New England. 

"I guess our stock's run out — 

Something Scriptural about it, maybe. 

But Brewster — he's offering 

Ten times what it's worth. 

And I can't sleep nights, 

And a pasture lot don't make a farm, 

And— 

"How much did Phil Ward 
Say he paid for that little 
Second-hand automobile?" 



THREE MEN SPEAK 

The first said: 

"There is something that goes 

With being young. 

I do not know, 

I cannot understand it, 

Nor you, for that matter. 

But it's the explanation 

If you can explain such things 

With plus and minus signs, just so! 

"Here's a fellow says 

He carries me upon his back, 

Because I work my head 

And he works his hands. 

I use his back 

And he uses my eyes — 

That's fair enough for anybody. 

But he won't have it that way. 

He won't call that Brotherhood. 

He doesn't like what my eyes see. 

And he says he's tired 

Toting me around. 

"I say that he must be very old 
Whining around like that 
About his share of the work. 
I didn't make him blind, 
Nor me halt, for that matter. 
[18] 



I don't know how we're ever 
Going to get along without 
His back and my eyes. 

"I don't call his back 
Very easy riding, either, 
When it comes to that. 

"The trouble is 

There's too much comes upon a man 
All at once, when he is growing old — 
Makes him sour about his rights. 
That's where all this talk comes from. 
You'd think a man would know 
Something about Brotherhood by the time 
He was seventy, more or less! 

"But it doesn't work that way. 

Maybe it's because 

There isn't any such thing. 

Maybe it's just another 

One of those things 

Being young does to you, 

With a ribbon and a fiddle. 

"What's the use of pretending? 
We old fellows know how to skin a skunk, 
And make the best of it, too, 
If we aren't too old." 
[19] 



The second said: 

"It isn't being young 

That has anything to do with it. 

It's just another way to get a dollar. 

They tried it out single 

And now they're trying it double, 

Running it down with the pack 

And calling it Brotherhood. 

"Sometimes I think it's like 
A shell game at the fair — 
Promising something you don't see 
For something you think you see. 
You might better have spent it 
For pink lemonade, or saved it 
For a gas-engine for the old woman. 

"You've put it in your copy-book 

A hundred times or more — 

And so have I — 

'You can't make something 

Out of nothing!' 

But what's the use 

Of quoting the schoolmaster? 

What's he know about things? 

Sitting there at his desk 

With a twelve-inch rule! 

You can see the pea 

With your own eyes — 

And things have changed, anyway. 

[20] 



"That fellow with the walnut shell- 
He's my idea of Brotherhood!" 

And the third said: 

"I know what it is, 

But I won't tell 

Because you aren't up to it." 

So the first 

Looked across at him and said: 

"You're too young to know." 

And the second said: 
"You're much too old." 

But he said: 
"I am neither. 
I'm you I" 



PLOWS 



A quiet little man, 
A member of the Academy 
They said, with pictures 
In the museum at Boston. 

I remember how he looked 
Standing there in the hall 
Over Cort's hardware-store — 
His thin, quick-scenting nostrils- 
The deep black eyes that kept 
Looking through things 
And under things 
And in between things 
For something he called: 
"The human equation." 

I was younger then. 

If a man were sick 

I thought he could be cured 

By a doctor with a 

Little, simple pill 

That could be taken 

With a glass of water. 

So much of this 
And so much of that 
And a drop from the bottle 
On the high shelf. 

[22] 



This for the liver 

And this for the bladder 

And this for the good of the stomach, 

(So I have stood 

In the flickering light 

Of the cart-tail medicine man 

With the walnut stain on his face, 

And the red feather in his black wig, 

And the tobacco drip 

Washing the paste diamond 

On his white shirt-front — 

So I have stood 

Watching him with his broken crucible 

Mixing, while I waited, 

The " Bitters" for my malady. 

A leaf from the dried dandelion, 
A root from the snake-vine , 
A berry from a secret place.) 

I was younger then, 

And so was he, 

The man with the pictures 

In the museum at Boston. 

He did not have a feather 

In his hair, nor walnut stain 

Upon his face, 

Nor a berry from a secret place, 

Although he had brought 

[23] 



A crucible of his own 

And he was mixing "Bitters" 

For a great Plague. 

He was no faker 

With a nigger playing the banjo 

And a bass-drum with his toes. 

He had smeared the red corpuscles 

Upon a glass slide, 

And screwed his microscope 

Close to the swarming mesa 

And there he had found 

The suspected infection — 

A myriad host — 

Cog, Bolt, and Lever, 

Nut, Spring, and Valve, 

Screw, Chain, and Bearing — 

Fastening their myriad tentacles 

To the red cheeks of a man's soul. 

Then he told us 
About a man 
He had seen 
In a fertile valley 
Beside the Mediterranean 
Who was sitting 
Beneath the shade 
Of an olive-tree 
Making a plow 
From a crooked stick. 
[8*1 



Himself, his wages, 

And his hours, 

His four walls 

The hills of morning. 

His time-clock 

The silent day 

Sifting through his fingers. 

Making all the plow, 
And while making it 
In his eyes 

The turn of the red earth 
And between his bare toes 
The feel of the cool clod — 
The smell of the rain 
In the wind. 

So Art into labor, 

And labor into contentment, 

And contentment into happiness, 

And happiness into the making 

Of a man's soul. 

"A man's soul!" 

How the quiet little man shuddered! 

It reminded him 
Of a factory he had seen — 
A monstrous thing of brick and steel 
Covering ten city blocks — 
A whirling, shrieking, stinking madness. 
[25] 



And the green, yellow smoke 
From the chimneys, shutting out 
The sun from the row of plain 
Little houses down the street; 
With their stoops all alike, 
And their front windows all alike, 
And their back yards all alike, 
And their wash-pulley poles all alike. 

Five thousand men 

Standing in the green and yellow murk, 
Bound wrist and ankle to a machine, 
Putty-faced men waiting listlessly 
For the shrill knife of the whistle 
To cut them free. 

Five thousand men — 

Putty-faced men — 

Doing a mean little part 

Of a mean little job 

In a mean little sort of a way, 

According to a formula 

Worked out by a college professor. 

They were making 

The great American steam-plow! 

To-day, 

There in the North River, 

Five silent ships 

[26] 



Slipped down with 
The run of the tide. 
No flags were flying. 
No whistles were blowing. 
No bells were ringing. 

So I said 

To the man who knew: 
"Where are they going? 
And what do they carry? 
And why do they hurry so?" 

I found 

That they were 

Taking wheat — 

Ten thousand times 

Ten thousand famine bushels 

To the man 

Who had been sitting 

Beneath the shade 

Of the olive-tree, 

Making a plow 

From a crooked stick. 



STREET LAMPS 

On city streets 
When night comes, 
You can hear the purr 
Of the many wings 
Toward the many lights. 

It is an old conceit 
Of the candle, 
That men come to it 
Leg weary with the sun. 

So with street lamps. 

I heard his voice 

Through the warm spring night 

Before I saw his face, 

And the little crowd about him 

On the street corner. 

He was a singed little man 
Selling pamphlets for ten cents 
Which taught you how to make 
A President of your child. 

"Breed your young 

As you breed your cattle. 

For ten cents, this book 

[28] 



Will tell you how to rear 

Your children with characters 

Like Abraham Lincoln's — 

The science of Eugenics — 

Make children like you make prize hogs- 

For ten cents — " 

I bought a copy of his book, 
But before I could put it 
In my pocket, a hand tip-tapped 
Upon my shoulder. 

"Do you believe 

What he says, neighbor?" 

He was a plain fellow 

With a stoop to his shoulders 

And New England across his forehead, 

And around his eyes and mouth — 

If he had been older, 

I should have called him 

"Mr. Emerson." 

I said: 

"I should like to have 

Blue-ribbon children." 

We sat down on the park bench. 
He said: 

"I would not buy his book 
Because it is blasphemous. 

f29l 



We cannot regulate such things — ■ 

We do not know where we are bound — 

How can we draw a chart?" 

"But the prize hogs?" I said. 

"We know that much. 

We can figure on the pork and bacon — 

So much for so much." 

But he shook his head. 

"I am a New-Englander. He said: 

For seven generations my people 

Run back to the days of the colonies 

And the royal grants 

And the Puritan strain. 

They have been schoolmasters, 

Traders with the West Indies — 

One preacher there was, 

And a blacksmith, 

And several farmers. 

"But preacher and teacher and 'smith 

They kept close to the land — 

They stood ankle deep in it — 

For two hundred years — 

For two hundred years — 

So that their toes 

Were always tangled 

In the roots of the grass. 



"They were men 

With a heft to their heads — 

Stone-wall men — 

Of that day and generation. 

"I do not know 
What it is 

That makes a stone-wall man, 
But it has something to do 
With picking up stones in a field 
And building them into a wall 
So that things may grow 
Where the Lord put the stone, 
And so that things may stay 
Where man put the wall. 

"We have the old house still 
With a bit of the land 
Up in Connecticut. 
But that's about all 
There is to it. 

"I've been a ribbon clerk 
For fifteen years. 

"You see, there is where 

I have a quarrel with that fellow. 

It takes seven generations — and more 

Of stone-wall men 

To make a ribbon clerk. 

[31] 



"Is that what New England 

Has been about? 

Jonathan Edwards, Wendell Phillips, 

Thoreau, Ephraim Williams, Mr. Whittier? 

A ribbon clerk? 

"I thought I knew New England 
When I saw it. 

Jane Addams, and Ida Tarbell, 
And Lincoln Steffens, and 
Roosevelt, though he was Dutch, 
And Wilson, born in Virginia, 
And this fellow Brandeis — 
They say he's a Jew — 
They're all New England. 

"I've been trying 
To figure it for fifteen years, 
Off and on, whenever I could 
Be alone, I'd be asking myself, 
* What's it all about?' 

"I'm just as much New England 

As they are, and more, for that matter. 

It's here in my bones, 

And deeper than that, sometimes. 

"I'm part of them, 
Bone and flesh. 
I read about them 

[321 



In the papers and magazines, 
And up there in my room, 
I can hear them 
Talking back and forth — 
New England talk! 

"But they won't listen 
When I join in. 
I can see they think 
I am a stranger. 

"They don't seem to recognize 
That my kind of talk 
Is New England, too. 

"Just like what I read 

A fellow wrote the other day 

In a weekly paper. 

He said the world was through 

With New England — the one 

You and I are talking about. 

"He said Puritan traditions 
Were worn-out crutches, 
And we couldn't expect 
To bolster up a limping world 
With them any more. 

"I don't know 
What he's talking about 
[331 



But I guess he does. 
Because folks wrote 
Letters to the paper 
And told him he was right. 

"Sometimes I think 
Maybe they meant me. 

"That's why I say, 
There's nothing to 
That fellow's talk. 

"His book won't tell you 
That it takes a preacher, 
Three schoolmasters, and a 'smith 
To make a ribbon clerk." 



SOWING THE WINTER RYE 

Dwight cleaned the scruff 

From the wood-hill lot 

And said: "Now it's got to work 

The same as the rest of us. 

A hill that's only good for scenery 

Isn't good for much. 

Unless maybe it might 

Make a sizable burying-lot — 

"But we don't do that any more. 

When you have it that near 

It's always reminding. 

I wouldn't care so much 

The rest of the year, 

But there's something about 

November reminding I don't like. 

With fields as spare as mine 

It isn't natural for a man 

To have it that way. 

"So I said: 'There's no good 

Saving it for a burying-lot. 

I'll brush her off of scrub 

And put her down in winter rye — 

Maybe there's something in this talk 

About taking manure from the air — 

Like that fellow said. 

I don't know where else we can get it. ! 

[351 



And so, to-day, 

Dwight's been at it. 

I've been watching him 

From my window, following him 

Now and then through the cold 

November afternoon — at his sowing 

From the tin pail 

In the crook of his arm. 

Striding and swinging, 
Striding and swinging, 

Dip and scatter, 
Dip and scatter, 

Up and over, 
Up and over 

The rim of the hill. 

I thought, 

Here's something for the philosophers — 

That the time of harvest 

Should come to be 

The time of sowing. 

When it was time for Dwight to quit 
I went across my lot to his, 
And up the hill, keeping to the edge 
Of the plowed field. 



I wanted to hear what he'd have 
To say about the philosophers 
If I should ask him. 

He did not see me 

There by the edge of the wood, 

So that I could stand and watch him 

Swing and scatter! Swing and scatter! 

Coming toward me. 

And as he walked 

I saw him slow and falter, 

And then he stopped 

Ankle deep — there in the heavy earth, 

With the pail in the crook 

Of his arm, and his head down 

As though he had been caught in a spell 

Of dizziness, or had pulled 

His shoulder with the swing. 

"I saw you stop," I said. 
"And I wondered if the old 
Trouble had come back." 

But he shook his head and laughed, 
And put down his pail and sat down 
There beside me on the sycamore log. 

"Time to quit an hour ago," 
He said. "But I got to laughing 
[37] 



About what a stranger came up here 
To say to me along about noon. 
I got to puzzling over what 
He had to say, and let the time 
Slip by — I don't know when I've 
Laughed so much, or laughed so hard. 
And I can't tell just what it is 
I'm laughing at — can't think it 
Out in words, and so I have to stop 
And laugh; that's what I was doing 
When you saw me." 

I said, "Who was he, a peddler?" 

Dwight said: 

"He didn't just call himself that — 
The fact is, I don't know 
What he was trying to be. 

"He said he was trying 

To sell me to myself! 

Maybe you can make something 

Out of that — I can't. 

"He said he could explain — 

He was a sort of politician — 

A new sort — because he didn't 

Give me one of the cigars he was smoking. 

"I can't tell you all he said. 
He was what we call an easy talker, 
138] 



And he said he wanted to be able 
To call me 'Comrade'! 

"First I thought he meant religion. 
Perhaps he was a Methodist — 
But he looked from foreign parts — 
One of these fellows that work in factories. 

"I let him have his say. 

There's something you have to listen to 

When a man thinks you've been abused. 

"'How long you been working to-day?' he asks. 
I said: 'Since sun-up.' 

"'And when do you quit?' he asks. 
'Sun-down,' I said. 

"'And what '11 you get for it?' he asks. 
'I'm after manure in the air,' I said. 

"'And what '11 you get for that?' he asks. 
'Maybe a stand of corn next year,' I said. 

'"What '11 that be worth?' he asked. 
'Whatever God Almighty 
Puts into the rain,' I said. 

"He laughed! 

'Who's this fellow God Almighty?' he asks. 

'Don't you have religion?' I said. 

[39] 



"' What's religion ever done for you?' he asks. 
'It might have done more 
If I'd done more,' I said. 

("I'm not religious except when I hear 

It getting attacked by a fellow with 

A black cigar in the corner of his mouth.) 

"He said: 

'God Almighty's for the rich. 

The working-man must make himself a God, 

With no Priest and no Church and no Giving 

"'Don't you know,' he said, 

'Don't you know there ain't no God?' 

"He said: 

'It's just a Santa Claus story 

Like you used to tell your kid. 

The rich man made it for the poor man, 

And they keep a few old women like 

These priests, around the chimney corner, 

To tell us children to be good, 

And say our prayers, and do our duty, 

And fetch and carry for our elders, 

Or Santa Claus won't stop in the morning.' 

"I said: 

'He didn't stop here, one year! 
[40] 



The summer I was drunk 
And didn't get the hay in.' 

"That made him mad, 

And he got up and brushed himself — 

Mighty particular he was to brush himself- 

And he went off over the wall, 

Saying something in his language. 

If it had been in English, I should say 

He was calling me a damned fool. 

"That's what I've been laughing at. 
What did he mean — 
Selling me to myself?" 
4 



WORDS IN PREFACE 

The letter lies on my table 
Just as I left it a day or so ago, 
Half torn through as I opened it. 
You can see the ink mark of my thumb 
Over the publisher's name at the top, 
And the few lines of blue type 
With the smudged erasures 
And the well-known name signed 
"Hastily yours": 

It reads: 

"We should like a short anthology 

Of verse — little poems of comfort 

From our poets of to-day — 

For the countless thousands 

Who shall mourn. 

Will you gather them together 

And write an introduction? 

We shall call the volume, 

'Comfort Ye, My People!'" 

Here is the introduction. 

Dear Reader: 

Three men came down my road 
Talking of things that men talk of 
When the furrow is run — 
Of the hogs gone with the cholera — 
[42] 



Of the corn rotted in the ground — 

Of France! 

And one said: 

"Why should I plow?" 

And one said: 

"Why should I plant?" 

And one said: 

"I think it is the last day." 

But I called to them: 

"You may plow! 

You may plant! 

It is not the last day! 

I have the Great Assurance!" 

Dear reader, I find it here 

In this anthology. 

These poems which I have culled 

Are carefully selected from your friends, 

The living poets — 

Little words of faith and hope 

To comfort and sustain you. 

Men used to say 

That poets were a part of God's Voice: 
I cannot tell; 

I only know it takes a long time 
To make a poet. 
Men made David a king 
But God made him a poet 
[43] 



Because He knew men should need him 
When the Jews were through with him. 

No one knows how God makes poets. 
He has told many things, but this 
He has never divulged. 

I could not make a poet, 

But I could whisper something to Him 

Which I think He ought to know, 

When He is making poets these days. 

He ought to sit cross-legged 

Like a tailor 

Sewing up their pockets 

Before ever they are born, 

So that they cannot be business men 

Or make automobiles 

Because so many poets 

Crawl into their pockets, 

And no matter where we search 

We cannot find them. 

But I hope that you 

Will turn the pages of this little book 

Each for your need and particular fancy. 

That you may be comforted — 

Your eyes may be better than mine. 

You shall find one 

Making verses to his mistress. 

[44] 



And man standing at his machine, 

Certain but uncertain 

After the thousand years 

As to which shall be animate! 

And one is ravished 
By a Japanese fan. 

And democracy has sent itself to war 
Butcher and Baker and Candlestick-maker 
Burning with the white flame! 

And one is making rimes to Peace. 

A poet afraid of Death! 

And one is fiddling jig tunes 

On the heartstrings of God Almighty. 

And ten million men with wide eyes 
Over No-man's Land 
Trying to see — God! 

And one is whimpering 
That Christ is dead- 
Slain by the hand of a Hun. 

And Jimmie Handy, 
Who used tc repair motorcycles 
And go with Susie Turner 
[45] 



Every Saturday night — 
They nailed him up 
With the cud of tobacco 
Still in his cheek, 
The Crucifixion brought 
To a barn door — 
Jimmie Handy — 
So that men might have 
The Everlasting Life! 

Sometimes I think 

The Lord is through with poets. 

Or perhaps He has changed the pattern; 

It may be He has taken to making 

Them into college professors. 

Perhaps it's Mr. Wilson! 

But you know how people 

Would laugh at that. 

A poet couldn't be some one 

You voted for in a barber shop! 

So, dear reader, 
This is how I know 
It is not the last day. 

The last day will have a poet. 

That is where the trumpet will come in! 



[46 J 



SIGNS 



I thought I'd put the sign up, anyway. 
Some of those artists who are coming up 
Through here might take a notion to the place. 

I'd sort of like to see an artist get it; 
They put such pretty things at the windows. 

Jule sold her farm last week — just this way — 
Put a notice on the gate-post. 
Funny, isn't it; how land that can't raise 
Anything else, they'll pay real high for? 

But then Ed says 

City folk don't like a house like this — 
Right on the road where every one can see 
What they're about; they want it back a space. 

There's such a thing as having 

Too much of folks, I guess. 

We used to say their welcome wears out. 

That's why a roadside site detracts from value. 

I don't just fancy having a sign 
Clutter up the yard this way; 
But you know how it is with me. 
There's no need of my hanging on — 
Wearing myself out keeping it up 
And then leaving it to charity. 
[47] 



It isn't as though 
I was ever going to have children. 
And Ed don't take to farming like he 
Used to before he got to house-painting. 
He's ailing most the time, now. 
Sometimes I think he's just petering out 
Right here before my very eyes. 

If there was anything 

Coming on after us it would be different.* 

But the doctor told me last year. 

It can't ever be! 

Oh, I know when I done it 
The minute Doctor Cobb says it; 
I could remember the very day — 
How the pain came down through me 
Here in my back and in my leg. 

I told the doctor 

Just how it happened. 

I said to Ma: 

"Ma, something's happened — 

I ain't feeling just right." 

But you know how she was: 

Never paying attention 

To anything except herself. 

"I ain't feeling just right," 
I says, trying to straighten up 
[481 



By holding on the kitchen door. 

But there she sat, and she says, 

"You got to get it through, Allie, 

You got to get it through, 

So's I can see. 

Seems so I'd just have to 

See through that door." 

I let it stay there, 
Just where I got stuck, 
Waiting for Ed to come home. 

I says: 

"Ma, I'm through!" 

Think of me saying that 
Ten years ago! 

You know how it was 

When Ed brought me here. 

Folks told me there was erysipelas 

In their family. 

They said they'd all lay down on me. 

Your mother used those very words. 

Ed always held it against her. 

I can see it now. 

There his mother was 

Bringing up a family for twenty-five years, 

And the day I walked into the house 

In my bridal dress, she sits down 

[49] 



In that rocking-chair and says 
She can't walk, something is the matter 
With her legs, and she can't walk, 
Can't take another step, not a step. 

And so I took off my dress 

And got supper; 

And Ed went to the milking, 

And we toted her bed down-stairs, 

And set it up in the side room, 

And we dragged her to it, 

x\nd back again the next morning, 

And all that week, 

And all the next week, 

And all the next year, 

And for ten years after that. 

Not a step did she take, 
Just sitting there finding fault, 
Criticizing me and everything I did, 
And everything I said — 
Until I pretty near went mad. 

Then one day 

She says she can't stand 

The sitting-room no longer. 

Because it hurt her eyes 
Looking at the same thing 
All the time. 

[50] 



She wants I should move the stove 
Into the parlor so she can sit in there 
Where her eyes won't hurt. 

And she kept at me, 
And she kept at me, 
Until I couldn't stand it no longer. 

So, one day, I says, 

"I guess I've got to do it 

To get some peace around here." 

So I up and took the pipe down 

With my own hands — a dirty job, too. 

Ed never looked after things 

Like he ought, even then. 

And I began to drag 

And to haul at that stove 

Until I had it almost half-way 

Through the door — 

Then it was 

That something give way. 

I forget what the doctor called it. 

But it give way. 

He found it soon enough 

When he begun to poke around on me. 

And there I was 
Stuck with the stove 
[51] 



Half-way through the door. 

And her sitting there 

Rocking and sniveling 

And sniveling and rocking, 

And she keeps saying, 

"Allie, I got to see through; 

Seems so I just got to see through." 

But I didn't touch a hand to it. 

When Ed comes home he says. 
"You oughtn't to have done it, 
Allie; you oughtn't to have done it." 

And then him and Joe 
Moved the stove through. 

I thought I'd put the sign up, anyway. 



BOGWATER 

Upon my reading-table 

Lies a copy of the country paper. 

Looking down the column of the page, 

I learn the topic of the Woman's Club 

This week will be, 

''The L'nmarried Woman — 

Her Right to a Child." 



At my window the summer ugh! 
Comes down upon the elm-trees. 
And I can see the silhouette 
Of Mary Hed^hes passing along 
The country road on her way 
To prayer-meeting at the 
Congregational church. 



Tall and stiff and straight 
She goes, a monotone in black — 
The little plain hat. 
The umbrella under her arm — 
Rain at - 
The Bible in her folded hands — 
The tight pull to her yellow-gray hair- 
The stern set of her face — 
The . measured, 

Clock-like stride, 

[53] 



Those who come in motor-ears 

Point to Mary Hedghes, smile. 

And turn to look again, 

Chatting idly of New England types. 

And of the harsh severities 

Of the Puritan remnant. 

Chatting idly— 

They of the softer breed — 

Crossed with lace and silk stockings, 

And the brocade motor — 

Three generations removed 

From the churning hand, 

The spring-house, and contented hens 

Soft pecking on warm manure piles. 

And Mary Hedghes 
On her way to prayer-meeting 
At the Congregational church 
This night for forty years. 

I do not know why 

I should stand and follow her, 

Or why this strange refrain 

Should echo through my ears 

Keeping broken measure to her tread. 

One foot! 
One foot! 

One foot following the other! 
[54 1 



One foot! 
One foot! 
One foot following the other! 

Steady treading! 
Steady treading! 

So! 

And so! 
And just so! 

Thus it was 

She found Anne Williams 

That night knee-deep in Bogwater, 

When no one else knew. 

One foot! 
One foot! 
One foot following the other! 

And there was something 

She said to her, 

Or something she did to her. 

Or was it what she did not say. 

Or did not do that brought 

Anne back to have her baby? 

But Mary Hedghes never went about 
Begging for Anne's transgression. 
Or asking us to send old baby clothes 
Or make new work. 
[55] 



Mary Hedghes' fingers 
Went deeper than old baby clothes 
When she groped in festering entrails 
To find the parted ends. 

To find the parted ends 
And tie them tight — 
Tight as fiddle-strings. 

And I think this night 

Of Anne Williams' man, 

Standing in the battle-ditches 

With wide eyes over the black night, 

With the clutch at his throat, 

And the white chill down 

Hip and knee and ankle. 

And of the other boys 

Of her Sunday-school class — 

Jack and Rob and Amizi — 

Standing there — 

Men of New England — 

One foot! 
One foot! 
One foot following the other! 

So! 

And so! 
And just so! 

[56] 



Steady treading 
Steady treading 

With something tied — 

Deep! 

Inside of them! 

Tight as fiddle-strings! 

The topic for the Woman's Club 

This week will be, 

"The Unmarried Woman— 

Her Right to a Child!" 

5 



THE TABLE WITH THE BANDY LEGS 

Times have changed around here, 
But not that much — 
No, not that much. 

Brandon's sent that foreigner 
Over here to buy my table, 
The one with the bandy legs. 
He knows good mahogany 
When he sees it. 
The trouble with him is 
He doesn't know me. 

I've heard of this fellow before 

With his barn full of old furniture. 

They say he has two men 

(Foreigners like himself) 

Polishing and puttering most of the time 

And then carting off to town to sell. 

It was just like little Brandon 
Thinking he could fool me 
With one of his trading tricks. 
Folks say that's the way he 
Made his money in Wall Street — 
Slick tricks! 

One day he came riding by 

On his circus horse — pure Arabian 

[58] 



The paper says it is, and it looks 

Like an animal in a fairy-story — 

The one the prince rides — 

I never saw one like it outside 

Of Mr. Barnum's show at Bridgeport. 

He saw my water-bucket standing 

On the table and he got off to 

Get a drink, or so he said. 

I saw him eye it 

Standing there a-straddle in his 

Riding-breeches and swinging up and 

Down on his toes. 

He didn't make a fit figure for a horse — 

His eyes were too greedy. 

I took a look at him and I said: 

"It ain't for sale; 

I got to have some place 

To keep the water-bucket." 

I thought that would quiet him, 

But here he sends this dark-complexioned peddler 

With a catalogue under his arm, 

From a Grand Rapids furniture emporium. 

It was made in colors 

Red and blue and yellow; 

Some of it was real pretty. 

I could see they were making 

Furniture different now, 

Just as he said. 

And he had a book of coupons 

[59] 



With a fountain-pen ready 
For me to sign my name. 

He wanted to give me an order 
For a brand-new piece of furniture 
From the catalogue, and I could 
Make my choice within the value. 
All he asked was that old clap-trap 
Under the water-bucket — that and 
My name signed to the paper. 

I was slow at first, 
Didn't seem to see 
Little Brandon standing there 
And talking through this critter's tongue. 
He was so polite and poor-looking, 
I thought maybe I'd let him 
Take it along — what there was left of it. 
No use holding on to it; 
It wasn't worth anything, 
And he'd just keep pestering me 
Until he carted it away. 
But I thought I'd have my say, first; 
You know how a woman will sometimes — 
And I said: "I know what sent you here 
Through this part of Connecticut. 
Some one wrote a piece once 
And put it in a magazine telling 
How this county still had some 
Old mahogany that could be had 
[60] 



For little or nothing; picked 

Up for a song was the way she said it. 

And I said then: 'There, now she's 

Done it, now the pestering 

Will begin just like it did 

Down Greenwich way when they 

Had the craze for our old stuff.' 

I've been watching you 

With your wagon carting 

Past here almost every day 

With something you picked up, 

And I knew it wouldn't be long 

Before you came to my door." 

And then, I don't know 

What it was possessed me. 

I said, "That table's been spoken for. 

Mr. Brandon stopped last week, 

Said he wanted it for that 

Million-dollar house they say 

He's building up along the ridge — 

Said he'd pay real handsome for it, too." 

I think it was the way 

The foreigner closed his eyes to keep me 

From seeing what was going on 

That made me suspicious 

He wouldn't say it was Brandon 

And he wouldn't say it wasn't. 

But I sent him off without particulars. 

[61] 



I told him I guessed I'd keep 
The table with the bandy legs — 
Something had to hold the water-bucket. 

I got to thinking after he'd gone 

I'd heard my mother say 

How she had worked and skimped 

For seven years 

To buy that table. 

For seven years — 

Wishing and wishing 

And skimping — 

Going by on a circus horse — 
And wanting, ain't getting! 

There's been too much of that going on. 
Times have changed around here. 
But not that much. 
No, not that much. 



WAITING FOR THE REAL-ESTATE MAN 

Scene — The kitchen of an old Connecticut farm-house. 
Elderly man and woman sitting before stove. 

Time — An early spring day, with the rain on the win- 
dows. 
The man speaks first. 

He: What I don't understand is 

Why he always talks the Sound view 
When he brings them up here. 
We never set much store by that. 

She: I always liked to see it 

On a summer morning when 
We went to get the cows — 
Just that blue coming up 
The orchard like the ribbon 
On a little girl's bonnet. 

He: And them old scrub cedars — 
He never misses a chance to 
Point them out on the side-hill. 
He must know that cedars won't grow 
Where anything else can get roothold. 

She: That's why I always fancied them — 
Coming up so friendly and standing 
There, winter and summer, 
Rain and shine — 

He: Couldn't get rid of them. 

[63] 



She: Their little ones 

Kept coming on and on 
Up the side-hill 
Until they almost reached 
The back door. 

He: And them fireplaces! 

What's all the fuss about them? 
We boarded 'em up quick enough 
Soon as we could get a stove. 
What 're they good for? 

She: That's where they're smarter. 
Tain't enough just to have 
A room het and — 

He: Now don't get to carrying on 

With that stuff that has no sense. 
You know I don't like it. 

She: I'm getting so old 
I can't tell 

What is sense any more. 
'Tain't what I thought it was. 
I know that. 

He: What's that got to do 

With what I'm talking about? 

She: It's what you said 
About fireplaces. 
[64] 



He: What 'd I say? 

She: About their being no use. 

He: No, they ain't. 

(There is the sound of a motor on the highway. 
He gets up and in an expectant attitude goes to 
the window. He pulls the curtain aside to look 
through the rain. She watches him for a moment 
in a little flutter of irresolution. Then, with a 
visible effort, she summons her courage and 
speaks — at first, falteringly.) 

She: I — I suppose it 'd fret you 
If I come out with it, Will? 
B-but I had been a-holding 
And a-holding it — 
Ever since that first night 
We drove up here from the parsonage. 
Do you want I should tell you, Will? 

He: What you been keeping from me? 

She: You recollect it, Will. 
How, when we got here 
Mrs. Purdy had the fire burning 
And the table all set. 
I can see just how it looked, 
When we come in the door — 
The fire in the chimney, 
And the doughnuts 
In the blue bowl. 

[65j 



He: She puttered around too late 

That night, hanging on, and hanging on— 
I always held it against her. 

She* That's what I'm coming to — 
That's what I'm coming to. 
When she was through washing the dishes, 
It was real late, wasn't it? 
And when she was gone, you said: 
"I guess I'll turn in first, 
And you can come when you get to it." 
Do you remember, Will? 
And I sat here before the fireplace, 
Here I sat, I recollect, 
Hearing you pulling at 
Your new boots — you had 
A fuss with them. 
And here I sat. 
You know how it is, Will, 
When you get to setting 
Before a fire seeing what 
You're going to do to-morrow. 

(She leans toward him — her face in a warm and 
half-bashful light.) 

I couldn't have told you then, Will; 

I couldn't have told you then — 

But as I sat there, 

Just as sure as you are setting here, 

I saw a little girl's face — 

A little girl's face — 

[66] 



Something like yours 

And something like my father's — 

Favored his eyes and smiled like him, 

And she had his way of 

Being honest around the forehead. 

He- If it wasn't a boy 

I'm glad it wasn't nothing. 

Such talk don't seem fit, anyway — 

'Tain't moral to talk it right out. 

She: It was boarding it up 
That killed me, Will. 
I never said a word. 
Because, then, I didn't 
Think it was sense. 

But, Will, I knew 
When you and George come in 
With them planks and begin 
To saw and to hammer — 
Recollect how I said, 
"I guess I'll go over to 
Jane Swively's for a spell"? 
Did you ever guess why, Will? 
Did you ever guess why? 

Maybe it was my head then, 
Like it is now; but when you 
Got to hammering — every time 
The hammer struck, something 

[67] 



Got to saying — keeping time — 
"They're nailin' her in 
So she can't come out! 

"They're nailin' her in 
So she can't come out! 

"So she can't ever 
Come out no more! 

"So she can't ever, ever — " 

(She is interrupted by the sound of a seconcj 
motor in the distance. The man drops the cur- 
tain and walks to mirror on side wall to slick up 
his hair.) 

He: There they are now! 

I can hear Merl's old Ford 

Turning the hill. 

He never will learn to manage it — 

Keeps fretting it 

Like he did his horse. 

She: I'll run into 

The next room 
So they won't see 
I been fussing. 

(Before she can go voices are heard outside.) 

[68] 



First Voice: Pull the car up 'side the road 
Under this old sycamore. 

Second Voice: There's a better view 

Of the house from here — 
Who's got an umbrella? 

First Voice: How's it suit you? 

Second Voice: Pretty well run down. 
How old did you say? 

First Voice: Some say a hundred and fifty. 

Second Voice: What's the idea 

Of those two big pines 

Standing there either side the front 

door? 
I'd rip them out first thing. 
Too much like a cemetery for me. 

First Voice. Yes, city folks seem to feel that way. 
You'll find most of them 
Dooryard trees cleaned out 
Around here nowadays. 
Ain't much sentiment in folks any 
more. 

Used to be when a couple 
Took up housekeeping 
[69] 



They'd plant two trees 

Before the door — 

One for each of them — 

And then when the kids come on, 

Each time, they'd plant 

A new one, until they had them 

Clean down to the road 

Second Voice: Only two of them here! 
Somebody get tired? 

(Coarse, boisterous laughter and snig- 
gering.) 

First Voice: As the old nigger said, 
"Ah reckon de old cow 
Don' gone dry!" 

(Coarse, boisterous laughter and snig- 
gering.) 



(curtain.) 



GRAVESTONES 

The Burying Ground 
Lies on the topmost hill. 

It used to be hard 

On the farm horses — 

Six and seven to the surrey. 

But now they take it 
A little easier 
With their Fords. 

I suppose it all 

Amounts to the same thing 

In the end. 

It seems to be 
Slowly filling up. 

When I was young 
And took the back road 
Home from school, 
We used to stop here 
In the spring, 
To pick myrtle, 
And to play 
Hide-and-seek 
Behind the stones. 
[71] 



I spy! 

And you spy! 

And within the shadow 
Of every sunken grave 
Red lips, and blue eyes, 
And scurrying feet, 
Quick tears, 
And quick forgetting, 
And girls' laughter. 

But now, 
When I go by 
I say: 

"I wonder why 

They never cut the grass?' 



LILAC-TIME 

George Herrick is a stolid man, 
His neighbors say. 

He does not sing or laugh 
Or listen to the rain. 

He lets his sign-board 
Do the talking. 

It swings both ways 
To the road and pinches 
With its gray, cracked lips 
These cautious words. 

Money to lend 

On Bond and Mortgage. 

I sometimes wonder 

Why it is 

That almost every man 

Who passes by his house 

Mumbles with the off-side corner 

Of his mouth and strikes out 

With his whip. 

They say he is not 

Human flesh — or fowl. 

And they whisper lewd things 

[73] 



Of his mother, telling how 
She dropped him early 
Like a rotten toad 
Upon the road. 
I've heard the talk 
A hundred times, 
And so have you. 

And often, when at dusk 

On winter nights 

I've seen him sitting 

At his window 

Working his accounts, 

I've tried to fancy 

How a man must feel 

Who cannot see his neighbors 

Passing by except he make 

A check mark in his book. 

But then — 

I cannot tell, 

I do not know 

If this be all the truth 

Or even half of what 

I should have told. 

For when, this evening, 
In the rain, I passed his house, 
I found him in the dooryard 
In his gingham sleeves— 

[74] 



Thin and gaunt and bent — 
Hacking at his lilac-bushes 
With a broken hatchet. 

I stopped to ask him why, 
And he said: 

"The damned things 

Reach out in the wind 

And scratch upon my window-pane!' 



HAUNTED HOUSES 

The haunted house 
Upon my road 
Is neither 
Red nor white. 

It has 

No shutters 

Barred upon a mystery. 

No cedar-trees 
With shadows 
Lying on the night. 

But sometimes 
When I ride 
And all my neighbors' 
Lamps are still, 

I hear a Voice! 

And then I say, 
"I guess it must 
Have been the wind!" 



DOOR-STEPS 

A DOOR-STEP 

Should be made 
To face the West. 

So that 
When a man 
Is through, 

He can sit 

And watch the sun go down 

And say: 

"Go along 
With you! 
My job's done!" 



I AM A TINKER 

I am a tinker. 

I fix up old things — 

Patch and solder and mend, 

And putter about folks' back doors 

For odds and ends 

They have thrown away. 

I cannot make new things. 
There's something lacking, somewhere. 
People say a tinker's nothing 
But a fool with a little 
Cunning added to his hand. 

If I had the head 

That was meant to go 

With my hands 

I might make something new. 

But perhaps it's just as well. 
God must have known 
What He was about, 
Because there are 
So many folks these days 
Who can make new things. 

I find them almost everywhere 
When I go into a new town 
And blow my horn 

[78] 



They all come running out 
To see if I have 
Something new to sell. 

But when they find 
That I am just a tinker, 
Looking here and there 
For old things to mend, 
They laugh and curse 
And stone me out of town. 

They shout: 

"He would mend old things! 

Fix them up with putty and solder! 

"Patch the jug 
To hold new wine! 

"Splice a crutch 

For a cripple that is dead!" 

And they spit upon the marks 
My feet have left. 

And they turn 
And hurry back, 
Stumbling madly 
On each other's heels, 
Each to his little shop, 
Fearing lest his neighbor 
[79] 



Make his new thing first 
And sell it before the paint 
And varnish are quite dry. 

But I go on 

About my way 

To patch and mend 

And putter about back doors 

For odds and ends 

That folks have thrown away — 

Old junk! 

And new junk! 

That I take in 

Now and then 

From the rain — 

Stuff that nobody wants 
Because they think 
It's all worn out 
And served its day — 
Or else, they are just sick 
From seeing it around. 

So 

I put it away 

And keep it. 

Some day, 

I know, 

That in the long swing 

[801 



Of my circuit, 

When I shall come again 

Along this road, 

These folks will come back to me 

With money in their hands 

To buy old things. 

Then I shall charge them 
A round sum, indeed. 
Who can tell? 
It may be the price 
Of immortality. 

Perhaps, 

After all, 

It is only 

The old men 

Who know 

Why God makes tinkers. 



PEAS PORRIDGE HOT 

You sit there, 
And I sit here, 
And we shall play 
At peas porridge hot. 

You on your stool 

And I on mine, 

And so, between us, 

Who knows, 

We may find 

An answer to this nursery nonsense. 

"For some like it hot 
And some like it cold, 
And some like it in the pot, 
Nine days old." 

That's about .,. 

All there is to it — 

A very simple game 

When once you learn the tune, 

And just how to cross the hands. 

But there are men 

I find 

Who will not play 

At such a foolish thing. 

[82] 



They'd rather sit 

Upon a stool 

All by themselves, 

And chew their finger-nails 

And make a new game. 

I know that they 

Get very cross with me 

Because I seem 

To think that somehow 

A good game 

Still seems to need 

You on your stool 
And me on mine. 

You sit there 
And I sit here. 

And so, 
Between us, 
We shall find: 

"That some like it hot 
And some like it cold, 
And some like it in the pot, 
Nine days old." 



THE ELEVEN FORTY-FIVE IS LATE 

Reyburn took me to the station 
But he could not wait to see me off 
Because the switchman said 
The eleven forty-five was late. 

Reyburn could not waste his time 
Loafing around a country depot — 
It was dead — 
There wasn't anything to see. 

He didn't mind, so much, 

Losing ten minutes, 

Now and then, 

In city terminals. 

You could get some life there — 

Sort of stand off 

And catch a notion about 

Your particular breed of herring. 



A man 

Calling out the names 
Of almost every place 
In almost every corner of the land. 
There was the thing 
To put an edge 
On a fellow's imagination. 
[84] 



Red Bank, White Horse, Painted Post, 
Ellenville, and Pleasant Valley, 
Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans, 
Kansas City, Denver, and the Golden Gate, 
All aboard for the Montreal Express! 

Italians, Russians, and Chinamen, 

Preachers, lawyers, and Congressmen, 

Actresses with their aunts, 

A dark detective waiting 

Behind a post, 

A wedding party going through, 

A fat man with the gate shut in his face, 

A nigger at the soda-fountain 

Eating white ice-cream. 

"That's the sort of thing 
That gives a man a notion 
What the world is like." 

So Reyburn took to his motor, 

And when he had gone 

I sat down on a keg of nails 

Thinking of herring, 

But of no particular breed. 

On the siding 
Of the one-track road 
Stood a shuttle train, 
With an idly puffing engine, 
F85 1 



Waiting for the eleven forty-five. 

And in the open doorway 

Of the baggage-car, 

A little ox-eyed man 

In his dirty shirt-sleeves, 

Sitting on a white-pine casket box 

Eating a banana — 

Peeling it down slowly, 

Like the petals of a lily. 

Peeling it down slowly, 

An ox-eyed man, 

Stopping now and then 

To swallow with a slow 

Side-pulling of his throat. 

On the platform, 
Shaded by the roof 
Of corrugated tin, 
A dressed hog 
With his four feet 
Braced in the air. 

A pregnant woman 

Weighing a little girl 

On a penny slot machine, 

A whining child, 

Sucking on a purple taffy. 

A fussy, important-looking man 

Holding his watch in his hand 

And shading his eyes down the track. 

[86] 



So we waited. 

And the pig lay 

With his feet in the air, 

And the little girl 

Sucked on her purple taffy, 

And the important man 

Shaded his eyes down the track. 

And on us all 

The benign countenance 

Of the ox-eyed little man 

Sitting in his shirt-sleeves 

On the white-pine casket box 

Peeling a banana 

Like the petals of a lily — 

Slowly chewing — 



THE END 



